Burnout
Out of context: Reply #41
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- monNom1
Burnout, as I understand it, is a deficit of emotional energy following a period of high-stress and emotionally demanding situations. Basically your are so tapped out emotionally that everything becomes dull, and you're excitement level is pretty much non-existent. Maybe you've used up all the chemicals in your brain, or more likely, your neural receptors related to the stress response are all burnt out and not as sensitive as they once were.You need time away to recover them to their previous state.
So burnout is emotional, and you can get it following a big stressful life-changing event, or if you work in a creative career (which is hugely related to emotional sensitivity), and you overextend yourself beyond your energies, without an adequate rest afterwards.
A surefire way to achieve burnout is to work long hours in a creative field without a good rest after big pushes. Unfortunately, most places you get to return to a normal 9-5 after a big push, which gradually erodes your energy. Couple that with the fact that many creatives have side-projects that they work on outside of work hours, and you end up without much time to recuperate the old neural connectors.
To avoid burnout, you need to manage your workload yourself, because 9 times out of 10, your boss is not going to accept anything less than whatever he can get away with. If you stand firm on work hours and workload, there's a small chance of getting let go, but the alternative is that if you don't, and you accept a grueling death-march schedule, you will become a burnt-out husk of a designer who is no longer valuable to any organization.